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Last year, the Gaming Pavilion at Macworld was largely abandoned, cast out into the North Hall Wasteland, far from the warm and friendly orbit of the Apple Pavilion in the South Hall. This year, gaming was centered in the alive-and-well West Hall, and gaming wasn't a Macworld Expo afterthought. Instead of a few lonely iPods running games from EA, a real pavilion was put up. More importantly, game developers like EA and Blizzard showed up, as well as Mac gaming stalwarts like Aspyr Media, and even a new one, EVE Online. It turns out 2008 will likely be the best year ever for gaming and Apple. Who knew?

Yes, Freeverse had a booth babe, but I wasn't in the mood for objectifying.

Hordes of Orcs is a crafty war game, in which you play "tower defense" to stop an endless stream of Orcs coming through a portal. You build towers to intercept them as they march across the screen to your village. Arrow towers, fire towers, radiation towers, towers. It's not an RTS, but it reminds me of one. It looked good, but the gameplay really wasn't my thing.

Remember Tempest, Asteroid? Neon Tango's not like them.

I did like Neon Tango, a 2D shooter, 50 maze levels, pretty good game play, and it looks great. It's a Mac-only game (UB) and will be out next month. Both games are $24.95.

Where is my NudeRaider mod?

Feral Interactive is another developer of native games for the Mac, porting familiar titles since 1996, like Lego Star Wars. This year at Macworld, they had on display a very familiar game, Tomb Raider. The 10th-anniversary edition of the seminal game played by millions of adolescent boys coming into their manhood is being released one more time. This enhanced version includes more puzzles, a little more linear play, and better graphics thanks to a revised engine. I played it for a bit, and it was a much, much smoother experience than the jerky game I remember.

No StarCraft 2 for you... yet

No, they didn't have a demo, but they did talk about the sequel to the Greatest Game EVER Made, StarCraft. StarCraft 2 will be simultaneously released for the Mac and PC sometime in the nebulous future, and it will immediately be the new Greatest Game EVER Made. I talked to several people familiar with it, and they swear it maintains the playability of the original, though there are many new units. Blizzard has gone so far as to import pros from Korea to tune the playability and snoop out game imbalance. Blizzard did have that WarCraft game a few people are talking about, which has some new MMOG competition on the Mac.

EVE Online: the other MMOG for the Mac

It's not StarCraft Worlds—but what could be except StarCraft Worlds?—but EVE Online is the next best thing, a sci-fi MMOG for the Mac. Spaceships are the mode of transportation in which players of one of four races go to and fro about a galaxy far, far away—but not that one. Playing one of four races, you mine, trade, and fight in typical Ayn Rand fashion, selfish rationalism in space. EVE Online uses Cider technology, meaning no space opera for Mac users with PPC machines. However, even Mac Intel users have had problems of a sort, being shunted into the "Classic" graphics version. The Premium version will be out by the end of the quarter, but unfortunately I didn't see it. Compared to the graphics of WoW, EVE Classic is a little dated looking. Still, if it weren't for Cider, there wouldn't be any EVE Online for Mac users. Playing EVE Online costs $15 a month.

Aspyr Media is not dead (except for Stubbs the Zombie)

You could argue that Aspyr is here in spite of Cider technology. Aspyr does native Mac games, not Windows-derived emulation. Of course, why not just use Boot Camp and Windows and be done with it, anyway? That's the new "Apple is Doomed" theory, that developers won't bother with Mac versions of software, and that over time Apple will become just another Windows OEM. If that were true, surely it will start with games, but it hasn't. I asked an Aspyr representative how business was since the switch to Intel, and he said it was good, no drop off in sales. He was upbeat—can PR types be any other way?—saying Aspyr is trying to "bring Mac to gaming," which is PR speak for selling both versions of a game on the same disc. Still, it's a good idea. Another one is iPhone development. While Apple has deigned thus far to, as the rep put it, "shine the light of Heaven" only on EA for mobile gaming, Aspyr is psyched about the iPhone/iPod Touch SDK. Meanwhile, Mac gamers can look forward to NeverWinter Nights 2 next month.

Enjoy your monopoly on iPod games while it lasts, EA

EA is one of those gaming companies that garners a lot of criticism. Not from this Mac user. Not only did they have their latest game up and running at Macworld '08, it's going to be a simultaneous release for Mac and PC later this year—yay, EA!

Creature building: could this be an ancestor of Jar Jar Binks?

The premise of Microcosmic GodSpore is both simple and complex: life from start to finish. Will Wright of Sims fame has created a game so sweeping that you really have to wonder if it can be pulled off. Broken into five distinct phases of game play: tide pool, creature, tribal, civilization, space, you play god—though it's more the watchmaker than the Zeus-type throwing lightning bolts and taking the shape of animals to have sex. Spore plays considerably differently in each phase, from arcade to pseudo-RPG to RTS... it's astonishing. If that was not enough, the characteristics of your creations are uploaded to a central database where they will populate the universes of other players, and they yours. It's difficult for me to say this... but this could become the Greatest Game EVER Made. At least until StarCraft 2 is released, so, theoretically, it could be forever. Spore will be out this year, no word on pricing.

My wife made me post this.

Piano Wizard has just been released for the Mac, though why the hell someone would get excited about learning to play the piano when they could be god, I don't know. It works like a typing tutor game, except for music. Colored stickers on the MIDI keyboard help you keep track of where your fingers are. Hit the key or chord at the right moment to pop the balloon or whatever and you are learning to play the piano. I watched people playing for a while. They laughed and learned—but were not gods. You can use any MIDI file, including ones from an online database, and you can use your own MIDI keyboard with a USB port. You can also buy a combo package for $199, or just software from $50 to $120. We're getting the combo package, because expanding your mind and learning new things is so much for fun than playing god on a 50" plasma display.

These were just some of the games at Macworld '08, and that's probably the most exciting announcement of all. The relationship between Apple and gaming is on the mend. Now, if Apple could only update the GPUs in Macs more often—or put an actual GPU in the MacBook, Mac Mini, and MacBook Air that isn't a piece of cardboard—that would be something.